Cut to Sound

In 2024-2025, I ran a collaborative videographic experiment featuring 24 other scholars and makers from around the world, working in 3 separate groups. In Stage 1, participants were asked to match image clips of their choice to a short, preassigned audio clip, taken from an unknown source. In Stage 2, they were asked to rewatch and reflect on the results of the previous stage, and to provide a brief written commentary. Together, this experiment enabled a shared exploration of the relationship between sounds, images, and words.

"Cut to Sound" is an exercise prompt based on the experiment; detailed instructions can be found here.

Here are the results of the experiment:

Group 1 participants were given consecutive, 30-second audio clips taken from Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002):

Group 2 participants were given consecutive, 30-second audio clips taken from the opening sequence of

We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011):

Group 3 participants were given consecutive, 30-second audio clips taken from the vault sequence from Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996), with some spoken lines removed: